


Monochrome

by supernoodle



Series: Collage [1]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Art, Big Brothers, Brothers, Comic strips, Cookies, Damian is a sulky preteen, Damian is learning how to be a little bro, Damian pov, Dick is a good big bro, Drawing, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Injury, Injury Recovery, Jason is a secret artist, Little Brothers, Medical Procedures, No man denies the butler, Snark, Tim has one healthy coping mechanism, all the brothers - Freeform, batfamily, caricature, damian-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-10 01:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supernoodle/pseuds/supernoodle
Summary: Drawing is Damian's shelter from the world, but he's not the only one that takes solace in paper and shades of grey.





	1. Caricature in the Study

“Li'l D, I'm starting to think you love that notebook more than me,” Grayson whined, crumpling to the floor with a hand to his forehead like a fainting maiden from one of his insipid romances.

“Your powers of observation are astounding, Grayson.”

The man pouted. Damian moved to a fresh page and began sketching out the gentle, flowing shapes of the tree outside the window. There was silence for a moment, before Grayson, still sprawled on the carpet, groaned like the stillness was a physical weight on his chest.

“But I'm boooored!”

“Cease your infant prattling and entertain yourself, then.”

“But I wanna do something with yooouuuuu.”

“I'm drawing, Grayson,” Damian snapped. Titus looked up from where he was sprawled in the patch of sunshine under the window. Damian moved quickly to capture the shape of his broad muzzle and pointed ears before the big dog decided the angry words were no cause for concern and went back to his nap.

The picture was almost finished when Grayson huffed and curled into a handstand before flipping to his feet.

“Fine, if your gonna be like that,” he said as he slouched out of the room.

Titus grunted and Damian wrinkled his nose. Now maybe he could work in peace.

He'd just finished another sketch of Titus napping in the sunbeam when Grayson came back in, moving much more quickly and accompanied by the sound of rustling paper. Damian looked up in time to see him drop a pile of printer paper and then a box of colored pencils before dropping onto his stomach himself, legs kicking up behind him like a child. He said nothing, not even looking at Damian, selecting a royal blue pencil and putting it to the paper. His movements were smooth and unhesitating, although the man wouldn't hesitate to draw a stick figure so perhaps it wasn't the best measurement of his artistic abilities. Damian returned to his own page. If nothing else, the man was finally holding still enough to make a decent reference.

For a while the only sounds were the ticking of the clocks, the soft rasp of pencils on paper, and the sleeping sounds of the dog. Drawing wasn't what Damian would have considered a group activity, but having someone else in the room, even if he wasn't speaking, made the experience – fuller. He decided he wouldn't mind allowing Grayson to do the same in the future.

“Hey, Dami, lookit this!”

Damian blinked, looking down to discover that his anonymous figure had fleshed itself out to become Grayson specifically, complete in his faded Gotham U sweatshirt and sports shorts. He scowled and looked up.

Grayson was holding up his creation and grinning. Damian squinted at the massively misproportioned figure on the page for a long moment. Then he recognized his own sweater, both tiny hands clutching pencils and scribbling frantically over an equally tiny notebook, exaggerated scowl on his massive face and the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.

“It's hideous,” he declared.

Grayson laughed and rolled onto his back, holding up the picture and looking at it himself.

“It's called caricature, Dami,” he said, eyes crinkled at the corners. “You take the most recognizable or striking features of a person and exaggerate them. It's basically visual satire.”

Damian raised an eyebrow. Now that he thought of it, there had been some political cartoons in a similar style in one of his history textbooks.  
Grayson rolled back over and reached for a black pencil, pulling over a fresh sheet with the other hand.

“It's been a long time since I did these,” he said, sketching out a head with an outrageously square face and the edges of a frown hanging past its jaw. “Learned at the circus. It's about time I did a new one of Bruce.”

Damian frowned faintly. If Father knew of this skill, then Grayson must have some ability.  
He reached down and picked up the sheet, tucking it into the back of his notebook before he picked up his pencil and started another candid of Grayson, looking for his most recognizable features.


	2. Impressionism at the Kitchen Table

Todd was an idiot. Pennyworth, unfortunately, didn't share the same opinion, which meant that Damian was coerced into assisting him with the unfortunate task of performing medical care for the family's black sheep. Not that Todd needed cookies to go with the sutures, bandages, and pain medication, but Damian had learned enough to resist protesting the indignity of acting as an errand-boy.

They had servants for this. To be specific, they had Pennyworth. However, no one denied Batman's butler.

Todd's apartment was nearly as disheveled as the man himself, takeout containers piled next to opened packaging from various medical paraphernalia nearly covering the two-person table. Pennyworth's eyebrows came together in a frown as Todd returned to the only chair in sight after opening the door for them. The man grimaced.

“Sorry, Alfie,” he said, voice like gravel. “Haven't been able to do much cleaning.”

Damian bypassed him to place the groceries and box of cookies in the kitchenette, ignoring the muttered “hey, brat” and the snapping sounds of Pennyworth pulling on latex gloves. He'd brought his pocket sketchbook in an attempt to salvage what time would be lost in waiting as Pennyworth checked to make sure that Todd wasn't any more damaged than usual. He slumped in the lumpy armchair in the pathetic excuse for a sitting room and pulled out his drawing supplies.

A profile of Alfred the cat was nearly complete when there was again the snap of latex and shuffling of plastic packaging. Damian finished shading his ears before slipping his pencil back in its case and putting it with his notebook in the pocket of his hoodie.

Pennyworth is cleaning up the takeout containers, but Damian stands and comes to the kitchenette. He is suddenly aware of the scent of the still-warm snickerdoodles filling the air.

Todd was eating one, resting his cheek on the heel of his palm while chewing and running a pen over a wrinkled napkin in short strokes. The microwave is running behind the half-wall to the kitchenette. Damian didn't pause, just looked at what he was writing while reaching for the open cookie box on the counter behind Todd's shoulder.

It's not writing, it's a drawing. He doesn't see any more than that before Pennyworth re-emerges from the kitchenette with a plate of reheated roast and mixed vegetables. Damian slips into the next room while the butler is fussing over Todd. If he can't be seen, then he can't be recruited for cleaning duty.

The hypothesis proves itself false a moment later, Pennyworth passing him tucked into the shadowed corner and speaking without turning around as he placed a dirty bowl in the sink and turned on the tap.

“If you would, Master Damian, the garbage bags are beside the refrigerator and the apartment could use some clearing.”

Damian curled his lip but went to the garbage bags. Pennyworth exited, glass of water in hand, and Damian began gathering empty bandage wrappers and plastic containers. By the time he had finished picking up the sitting room and bathroom, where blood still stained the gout between the tiles, Todd was finished eating and Pennyworth was helping him out of his chair.

“Don't break anything, brat,” Todd grumbled as he shuffled to his bedroom.

“Tt.” Damian sneered. “As if your possessions are worth the effort of damaging.”

Todd snorted and Damian slipped around him to get to the dining nook. The table was the last thing to clean, as long as Pennyworth didn't notice the mess in the bathroom.

He shoved styrofoam containers and the remains of Pennyworth's medical care into the garbage bag, working counterclockwise until he came to the seat by the kitchen and saw the napkin on which Todd had been drawing. He picked up the tattered scrap of flimsy paper and squinted at the bold, irregular lines.

It was a tall, slender man, features indistinct beyond a straight nose and a thin mustache, suit rendered in a few conservative strokes, an oblong tray of – cookies, perhaps, or some other small, round confection in his gloved hands.

An illustration of Pennyworth, rendered in minimal detail, but nearly elegant in its simplicity. Defining features.

Pennyworth the man emerged from the bedroom and Damian slipped the napkin into his pocket. The butler swept passed him, not acknowledging his inactivity or the furtive movement. Damian returned to clearing the table, the sound of a cabinet opening and the sloshing of liquid telling him that Pennyworth was retrieving the cleaning supplies.

Damian knotted the bag and set it by the door as Pennyworth strode for the bathroom. The butler would take as least twenty minutes to clean the tiles to satisfaction. Damian pulled out his notebook and settled back in the armchair, pulling out the napkin and slipping it between the pages before turning to a fresh page and calling to mind the lazy lines of Alfred lounging in the sun.


	3. Cartoons in the Meeting Room

Damian was convinced that if the members of the WE board thought any slower, they would all lapse into comas. At least he wasn't suffering alone, although he would have preferred that Father be forced to accompany him instead of Drake. It would have been a suitable repayment for his forced attendance at this mind-numbing PR event, with the added benefit of not being subject to Drake, who appeared to be functioning amongst the simpletons with ease and taking notes at a rapid pace.

There were only so many pages of notebook he could go through before he couldn't be held responsible for his actions. Grayson and Father wished him to enjoy the Western concept of “childhood” without the repercussions inherent to his position as the heir to the al Ghul line, which meant that they could deal with the consequences if he were to take them up on their offer and imitate a spoiled and overstimulated child and throw a fit in the hall.

The indignity would be bearable by virtue of the headache he would return upon his father and the expression which would appear on Drake's face when something intruded on his carefully ordered business life.

Damian was beginning to attempt a caricature of the red-faced man occupying a seat across the table, who was beginning upon yet another long-winded and poorly-supported argument in favor of increased finances to his department, when Drake executed a particularly violent reshuffling of his papers and one of them skidded to a stop before Damian. He was about to flick it back when he caught a glimpse of rough, harsh pencil lines in the margins.

Drake was apparently focused on the papers still in front of him, mechanical pencil moving in choppy, firm motions that didn't resemble the motions of script now that Damian was paying attention. Instead of returning the paper – a revenue report – Damian pulled it off the table and settled it over his own frustrated attempts at imitating Grayson's art style.

After a moment of puzzling, he deciphered a comic strip running lengthwise down the page, thumbnail scenes divided by horizontal lines. The characters, men and women seated around a long table, have neither the exaggeration of Grayson's nor understatement of Todd's, but aren't quite in any of the styles Damian had seen in his, admittedly brief, examination of the “funny pages” of the newspapers. Instead of action, speech bubbles hover near the illustrated ceiling with lines connecting them to speakers.

The figure at the head of the table – it takes a moment of squinting for Damian to decipher the under-eye bags and a giant cup of coffee as Drake's representation of himself – asked how he should restructure the company to increase efficiency.

“Replace all the science staff with hamsters!” cried a woman in a lab coat and glasses, the font in her bubble round and dramatic like a comic book's.

“Take everybody's money and give it to me!” demanded a man in a tie with shading on his cheeks, words in pompous script. Damian recalled the red-faced man's theme of choice and surreptitiously checked how the seating arrangement in the meeting room matched up with its illustrated cousin in his hands.

“Stop financing charities and start buying us yachts!” said a stick-thin man with equally thin script, and Damian watched as the real counterpart interrupted the red-faced man with the words “increased employee benefits.”

The impossible suggestions continued down the page, ranging from “fire everybody who can't fire me” with hearts dotting the i's to “put everybody on vacation” in jumbled, preschool-style letters.

Near the bottom of the page, a man for whom Damian couldn't find a match in reality jumped onto the table and struck a dramatic pose with a sword, the words “MORTAL COMBAT!” above his head in a medieval font. The box below was empty of text, the man still on the table and an ellipsis hovering over Drake.

In the final box, Drake's cartoon counterpart narrowed his eyes and said “fine, just don't tell my little brother,” and the swordsman descended upon the panicked employees while declaring “begone, foul agents of darkness!”

Damian caught himself before he snickered. Drake obviously hadn't meant for the expression of his frustration to fall into Damian's hands, but the “little brother” had seen the state of his WE hard document organization system and knew that half of the papers fanned out on the table before the young CEO would be dropped, torn, spilled on, or otherwise lost. He wouldn't notice one page missing. 

Damian folded it and tucked it into the back of his sketch book. If he continued to collect samples of his siblings' work, he would need to invest in on with pockets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No offense meant to actual big-business employees, but teenage CEOs need coping mechanisms.  
> Changing up the chapter count because these accidentally developed a theme on me that won't naturally continue with the girls.

**Author's Note:**

> See this [tumblr tag](https://captainsupernoodle.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%3A-monochrome) for further fic material.


End file.
